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Guess what came early? Book II!
Release date was July 8 so I was expecting to see nothing before the second week in July. But yesterday I found this in the mail! It’s very exciting to see the finished cover with the spot varnish. The snake really pops! I kept it in my bag at work and would glance fondly at it now and then.
And last night, as a lovely coincidence, I had tickets to Ray LaMontagne/Brandi Carlisle/Secret Sisters. It was a beautiful evening of music under the stars with my oldest friend Julie and my second book tucked in my bag.
Perfect day!
It’s alive! This week I received my first Advanced Reader’s Copy (ARC) of book two! I've looked at the cover art a hundred times, yet nothing quite prepares you for seeing it in book form. Funny as it may sound, it reminds me that the other book is still out there! My husband told me this morning that a high school boy came up to him yesterday and was raving about how much he was enjoying my book. We both kind of marveled at the fact that we don’t think about the book that often; it almost feels like a movie that came out and then went away. Release time was hectic with all the readings and school visits, but once the initial few weeks of fervor were over, we all went about our normal lives—which for me includes a pretty intense day job. So when I get an ARC in the mail or hear about a kid who is reading my book, it snaps me back to this alternate reality, the reality where I am an author. I didn't intend to have a double life, it just sort of happened.
My kids have been trying to get me to play Mario Kart on the Wii since Christmas. I’d honestly rather clean those vile little bolts around the base of the toilet than play video games, so it’s taken them a while to get that silly white steering wheel in my hands. When we started playing I felt like I was 15 again the first few minutes of having learner’s permit. I was overcompensating so hard that I was bouncing off rocks and guardrails and enormous mushrooms and whatnot. It was infuriating—just when I got up enough speed to clip along there’d be another obstacle or a quick turn. I asked the kids if there was a course that was simply a straight road so you could just gun it. They looked at me as if I’d just revealed a vestigial tail, and said, “Uh, no. What would be the point?”
That’s kind of what I wanted the writing life to be. You know, put out a book and then gun it. But, as my kids would say, “What would be the point?” Perhaps there’s a reason I’ve run in to an enormous mushroom or slammed into a guardrail. Perhaps it’s not supposed to be easy. Because we tend not to value what comes easily.
Raising good children, finding work you enjoy, getting published—none of it is easy. But there are moments, like the first time you touch a book that bears your name on its spine, that make it all worthwhile. I’ve just had one of those days.
Blogger of the Week:
Christy Raedeke...
Oregon-based YA author Christy Raedeke is a self-proclaimed "compulsive blogger." Here she talks about starting out, why she blogs, and offers some advice to those just dipping their toes into the blogosphere. Click here to visit her blog Juvenescence (I love the name!)
Why did you start blogging?
I really started blogging about five years ago with a blog unknown to even my husband! I think blogging is a really interesting way to get your writing gears moving every morning. A year ago I started the blog Juvenescence, which gave my blogging a bit of focus. Wait, what’s less than a bit? A smidge? Okay, it’s more like a smidge of focus.
What do you blog about?
I started this blog to connect with other writers, not as a marketing tool. I try to include anecdotal information about the publishing process as I go through it and I’ve started doing interviews with debut authors, but a lot of the time I post about things that are happening in my life. Vignettes, I guess.
What advice would you offer new bloggers?
If anyone is thinking of starting a blog, I’d say go for it! It’s free and it’s incredibly easy to figure out. (It takes literally less than five minutes to set up a blog.) Blogging will quickly become a natural part of your daily writing practice. And there’s something magical about the “Publish Post” button that you click to get a new post on your blog; think of it as your daily commitment to publishing. I had no readers the first month, a handful the second, and then the growth was exponential. Stick with it. Post often, even if it’s a short one. Make friends with other bloggers—there are people I know through blogging whom I would hug like long-lost kin if I met them in person, that’s how much I love them.
Tell me about your upcoming titles with Flux.
This was my deal report from Publishers Marketplace:
Christy Raedeke’s PROPHECY OF DAYS, pitched as a YA Da Vinci Code relating to the Mayan calendar which mysteriously ends in 2012, in which a teen, with the help of a gorgeous Scottish lad, must figure out her role in a cryptic prophecy while trying to outwit a secret society that will stop at nothing to control her, to Andrew Karre at Flux, in a two-book deal, for publication in Summer 2010, by Laura Rennert at Andrea Brown Literary Agency (North America).
I’m proud to announce that I'm now a member of 2010: A Book Odyssey. Administered by authors Lindsey Leavitt and Heidi R. Kling, this is where the writers who have books coming out in 2010 gather. (Thanks to Suzanne Young for letting me know about the Tenners.)
I must admit I was happy to meet so many other writer’s whose books won’t becoming out anytime soon! After working in high-tech where a product is obsolete after 18 months, a year and a half to bring a book to market seems bizarre. But I'm really excited to be in such great company. Thanks for having me, Tenners.
I’ve been thinking a lot about India lately. Scott and I traveled there a little over ten years ago but my memory of it is as sharp as it was the day I left. It is a country that leaves an impression. I said I’d never go back. India assaults you in every way—with its crowds, with its smells, with its heat, with its swindlers, and with its beauty.
Anywhere else in the world you can get in a cab and say, I’d like to go to X restaurant please, and you’d actually be taken to restaurant X. In India you say, I’d like to go to X restaurant please, and then you are taken to the cab driver’s brother-in-law’s parents’ restaurant. “Is much better here,” the cabbie will say, unapologetically collecting your money even though he’s taken you someplace you didn’t ask to go. “And tell them Dinesh sent you,” he’ll add before zooming off.
The one place I really wanted to see in India was Sarnath, where Buddha gave his first teaching and introduced his doctrine of peace. Sarnath is outside of intensely populated Varansi, which is, at about 3,000 years old, one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world. It's situated on the banks of Ganges River where throngs of Indians come every morning, descending the stepped ghats to bathe, pray, and brush their teeth. No one seems to mind if the ghat they 're using is next to a crematorium where relatives wait next to burning funeral pyres for bodies to become ashes so they can scatter them in the Ganges. There might be more DNA in that river than water.
When we got to Varanasi, Scott didn’t feel too well so I set out on my own. I was going to save the big sightseeing for when he was better, so I thought I’d check out a sari silk shop. I got the name of a good one from a guy at our hotel who gave me a card with precise directions for the cab driver to follow. Of course, the cab driver ignored the address. Instead of going deeper into the labyrinthine city, this guy started driving me out of town. I leaned over a couple of times, pointing to the name and address on the card I clutched, and the driver would nod vigorously. When we finally stopped it was at a wholesale fabric warehouse far from the city. “This is best silk in India,” he said, pointing to his meter to show me how many rupees I owed him. “And tell them Pradeep sent you.”
The man in the warehouse helped me call a cab to get back, but of course the driver didn’t want to take me straight back. This time, though, it was not about commerce. “To Rishipattana?” he asked. I shook my head and handed him a card with my hotel’s name and address. He looked at it and handed it back. “You have been to Rishipattana?” he asked. I said no, but I wanted to go straight back to the hotel. He started driving and in less than two minutes I understood; Rishipattana was another name for Sarnath. The driver stopped, rightly assuming I'd want to visit this sacred place, and put his palm over the meter. It couldn’t have been much—it turned out the fabric warehouse was only about a mile away—but in my experience of India, not accepting money was rare.
At last, I had been taken somewhere I had planned on going. Just not that day. Or in that way.
I suppose I’m thinking of India because it’s very much like writing a novel. You know where you want to go, you just don’t know how you’re going to get there. Or if you’ll be taken somewhere else entirely.
I’m about 40 pages from finishing my current work in progress and I feel like I’m stepping in to a cab in India. Despite having a good idea about where I want to go, I have no idea where I’ll end up.
When my manuscript went out to four editors a couple of weeks ago, I waved off questions about nerves or jitters. “I’m just glad I’m so deep into this new manuscript,” I’d said. “It keeps me from thinking about the other one at all.”
This worked, of course, for about 48 hours. I wrote with a new-found fervor for two full days and then the brakes locked up. I found myself sampling some of that powerful gateway drug, Google. While I have exercised great restraint in not putting those editors’ names into Google Alerts in order to get a fresh feed of information, I will admit to some seriously deep profiling.
I read their blogs, looked at their photos on Facebook or Myspace, read summaries of talks they given at conferences, even researched some hobbies I’d never heard of. For instance, one of these fine editors is into randonneuring, which I discovered is a fancy French word for long-distance unsupported endurance cycling. Spiraling into neurosis from too much Googling, I immediately concluded this editor would hate my work—that my dislike of anything 1) involving long distances 2) unsupported 3) that one has to endure or 4) cycling-related would somehow come across, despite the fact that not one of these four things is ever mentioned in my YA novel.
Then I realized that writing is exactly like randonneuring without the bike. It is nothing if not a long-distance, unsupported endurance race. I'm just grateful that lycra shorts aren't required.
Today I’m getting a grip. No search engines, no blog trolling for updates on current states of mind. I’m back to that manuscript I was so grateful to have—you know, the one that was keeping my mind off everything else…
Right.
I was reading Bookpage and came across an ad for books distributed by Atlas Books. The covers are awful, the prices are amazing ($29.95, anyone?) and the descriptions simply lead one to say “Huh?”
“Cry of Justice”
Commanding a small brigade, the maga Protunista searches for the power of her former Cadre masters and must stage a frantic defense of the tower, inside and out.
“The Return of Planet X"
This book is an informational source examining all the records of this controversial subject including the record of X’s ancient science of prophecy and the signs of its approach.
See for yourself here.
I guess it was the perfect day! I would love to say, "My second book in my bag." How awesome! Congrats!
Thanks, LMJ! It's been a fun couple of days! (And the book is still in my bag :)
It looks so smooth and pretty! :) Congratulations Christy! I still haven't read your first book - can't find a copy anywhere!
CONGRATULATIONS!!! Can't believe it came so early. when is the release party?
CAM
Love the cover!!! It goes so well with the first book's cover, which I've always thought was one of the coolest graphics I've ever seen.
Precious...Amazon has the Daykeepers' Grimoire available and it's a MUST read. You'll be hopping to read the second book right away, so order both. The rest of us had to wait over a year for book 2...and it was a LONG wait!!
Steve - Thank you so much for the kind words about the cover!
CAM - Book release party is at Barnes & Noble on July 27th!
Precious, I am still amazed that you cannot get the book where you are. I'm not sure what to do - every copy I send you "disappears" in the mail system. WorldCat shows that there are several libraries near you that have it - perhaps that's a way to get your hands on it?